442 
ods in different places. Personally I have become 
convinced of the efficacy of the mulch system for a 
certain Virginia mountainside where I havff v 3,000 
trees risking their lives by that method, but the "evi¬ 
dence that convinced me was various, and 1 have seen 
but one true example of the real mulch method, 
namely Grant Hitchings. Many of the people who 
praise the method have never seen it in operations 
more than once or twice, while the majority of the 
condcmners never saw it at all. In other words, real 
mulched orchards are exceedingly scarce. I am sure 
it will be of value to the discussion if Mr. Hotaling 
will add to our small list of facts the following: 
1. Location and brief description of the places 
where apples can be profitably grown, yet “no system 
of cultivation will be an entire success.” 
2. Brief statement of conditions that make Colum¬ 
bia County, N. Y., impossible for good success in any 
kind of mulch orchard. 
3. Statement of location, soil conditions and con¬ 
dition of apple trees and yield in orchards, and num¬ 
ber of orchards he has seen that have had a trial of 
mulch method that met the following conditions, and 
I think no one can claim that the mulch method has 
been tried if these conditions have not been carried 
out. Trees to be of reasonable bearing age. To 
have had nothing taken out of orchard but apples 
for eight years, or since the orchard was planted. 
To have had bushes and briars kept cut at least once 
a year. 
4. To have trees free from San Jose scale. No 
comparison of methods can be made if spraying has 
not been similarly done on the compared orchards. 
Mr. Hotaling’s reasons for the failure of mulch 
method in Columbia County, N. Y., will be of es¬ 
pecial value because it is on the Hudson River in 
practically the same latitude as Mr. Ilitchings and 
Mr. Vergon, has as good rainfall as either of them, 
and is a country where the apple tree naturally grows 
wild in considerable numbers. j. russell smith. 
University of Pennsylvania. 
THE DOUBLE COMMISSION GRAFT. 
On page 357 you speak of the opposition of the 
commission men to the Lupton bill, intended to bond 
commission houses. This association which I represent 
can give a partial reason. During the last two years 
a practice has crept in, that to say the least is graft, 
and commission houses of good standing practice it 
and claim it is legitimate, and it is becoming the rule 
instead of the exception with many firms. You may 
consign a car of fruit or produce to a certain firm, 
and that firm in turn will divert the shipment to some 
other firm. The firm selling the consignment deducts 
its 10 per cent, sending the balance to the firm who 
diverted the shipment (without consignor’s knowledge). 
This firm also deducts its (??) commission, usually 
10 per cent and forwards the balance, (if any) to 
shipper. Now the firm to whom the car was originally 
consigned has spent neither time nor money, but still 
claims a commission, and I am informed that such 
transactions are made under a rule of the League. 
No wonder they oppose bonding. I am credibly in¬ 
formed that Florida orange growers, during the Win¬ 
ter of 190S, had as many as three commissions of 10 
per cent each, deducted from a shipment, in some cases 
the shipper was called upon to make good the freight. 
I have in my possession the papers to show where it 
was worked on me, and by two firms of high standing. 
Florida. w. j. kimball. 
A LOUISIANA BAMBOO GROVE. 
The bamboo is a giant reed cane, native to the 
tropics in both hemispheres. They are also found in 
large quantities in China and Japan. Here, and in 
the East Indies and the Philippines, they occupy an 
important position, furnishing the material from 
which are made the native houses, fencing, masts of 
vessels, drinking cups and domestic utensils, matting, 
baskets, fish traps and hats. From the juice of certain 
varieties is obtained a saccharine exudate called 
Indian honey. Other varieties yield a juice which is 
called bamboo wine. The tender shoots are a choice 
article of food, being stewed in vinegar and oil and 
eaten like asparagus. The plant is of erect growth, 
attaining a height of from 30 to 100 feet. In China, 
Japan and the Philippines they are employed for 
every purpose for which we use lumber. 
The grove shown in the illustration, Fig. 172, is 
located at Abbeville, Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, 
about 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The origi¬ 
nal plants were obtained 15 years ago from Japan, 
through a San Francisco importer. The little stems 
were about 18 inches long and about the size of a 
lead pencil; attached to them was a mass of fibrous 
roots about the size of two fists. About them was a 
layer of rich, black soil, the whole being neatly sewed 
up in China matting such as comes around tea chests. 
They were planted in a corner of my garden, watered 
occasionally and cultivated to the extent of keeping 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
down the grass and weeds. At that time I could ob¬ 
tain no information either from the United States 
Department of Agriculture, or the Experiment Sta¬ 
tion in California as to their culture or propagation. 
So, as it were, they worked out their own salvation. 
They have a jointed, subterranean rhizome or root- 
stock, from which the cane or bamboo sprouts up. 
When it first pokes its head above the ground it is 
covered with a brown husk or shuck, and looks very 
much like an ear of corn. They shoot up very rap¬ 
idly, at Vhe rate of from 12 to IS inches a day. Each 
joint has its own covering of shucks, and when the 
cone is about 10 feet high the lower shucks shed and 
fall off. Unlike most plants or trees the bamboo 
never grows except during the short period of its 
emergence from the earth, though it takes two or 
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTING WELL COVER, Fig. 1(!9. 
three years for the cone to harden and reach its 
maturity. Every year, however, the shoots come out 
larger and these in my grove range in size from one’s 
finger and six feet tall to the gigantic canes 18 inches 
in circumference and GO feet tall. The small canes 
have a limb at each joint, which has smaller limbs at 
right angles from the main limb, and these have 
leaves, as enclosed. The large canes rise 20 or 30 
feet without a branch; from that distance to the 
summit there is a branch at the base of every joint. 
They went through the terrible blizzard of February, 
1899, when the mercury reached 6 degrees and all the 
orange trees were killed to the ground, and they bent 
almost double under the weight of sleet and snow, 
but escaped without injury. Whenever they are cul- 
DETAILS OF WELL COYER. Fig. 170. 
tivated upon a commercial scale, I have no doubt 
there would be a demand for bamboo poles in the 
manufacture of furniture, screens and novelties. My 
only object in cultivating them has been to indulge 
a love for the rare and beautiful in Nature. 
C. J. EDWARDS. 
WHAT TO DO ABOUT “SUBSTITUTE TREES” 
I have read with much interest “That Substituted 
Tree Case,” published on page 1102. It is of very 
serious concern to me, as I am engaged in purchasing- 
pecans for an orchard. Of course, the responsibility 
and good faith of the nurseryman is of much more 
concern to the pecan buyer even than it is to the 
peach buyer, not only because of the much longer 
THE WELL COVER FINISHED. Fig. 171. 
time it will take before he can remedy any mistakes, 
but because he is planting, not for a few years, "but 
for his descendants to the third generation. It cer¬ 
tainly seems to be a most outrageous imposition upon 
the purchaser of trees in good faith to hold that the 
nurseryman’s liability is limited to the cost price of 
the trees, and that he will be recompensed by the re¬ 
placing of bad trees by new ones; and yet it is a 
surprising thing that practically all the nurserymen 
that I have talked to take this view. 1 will say right 
here that I have visited every nurseryman of im¬ 
portance, with one or two possible exceptions, who is 
engaged in growing pecan trees, and have talked to 
many of them about guarantee. 
As soon as you talk to a nurseryman about guar¬ 
antee he begins to feel offended or insulted, and says 
April 9, 
that if you haven’t enough confidence in him to buy 
the trees on his reputation you would better not buy 
them from him, or discourse to that effect. Some say 
they will agree to give you a new tree for every one 
that turns out to be other than the variety you bought 
it for, but when it comes to paying for your loss 
during the years you have been tending that tree they 
draw back and say they wash their hands of the whole 
matter. They usually take refuge behind mistakes of 
their employees. One who is perhaps the largest 
and most responsible grower in Mississippi told me 
that he. wanted peace in his old age, and could not 
afford to saddle his children with the responsibility 
of mistakes made many years before, and for which 
they were not responsible. It must be clear to any 
purchaser at least, that what he seeks to make the 
nurseryman responsible for is not mistakes in in¬ 
dividual trees, perhaps say one or two in a hundred, 
but wholesale and wilful substitution, which is, I 
know to be a fact, practiced on a large scale in the 
pecan business, and that for the very reason that no¬ 
body will know it until many years afterward, and the 
nurseryman can have a chance to get away with the 
swag or else plead statute of limitations. A nursery¬ 
man may tell you that he has no object in substitut¬ 
ing, as one variety is as easy to grow as another, 
but as a matter of fact, it depends not on what is 
easy to grow, but on what the nurseryman has on 
hand and what he has orders for. If a nurseryman 
has, suppose, 10,000 more Stuart trees than he can 
possibly dispose of, and gets an order for 5,000 
Success, which he would have to buy of another 
nurseryman, there is a strong temptation for him to 
work off those extra Stuarts as Success, whether or 
not he can get a higher price in so doing. 
It is a known but most deplorable fact that tens 
of thousands of pecan trees have been and are being 
sold, and that by nurserymen with a reputation for 
responsibility and good faith, which are not what they 
purport to be, and that in after years the buyers 
will be bitterly disappointed, all to enable these 
persons to make a few dishonest dollars, and all be¬ 
cause the trees had to be taken absolutely on faith. 
A nurseryman in the pecan business can acquire a 
reputation for honesty and good faith and keep it for 
five or six years at least until his trees come into 
bearing, before anybody finds out whether he is honest 
or not, and even then his dishonest practices may 
have been so cautious that they will be practically 
hidden. 
I would like to ask The R. N.-Y., first, whether 
it thinks that in purchasing pecan trees a written 
contract should be entered into with a definite stipula¬ 
tion, which might be. say, to the effect that in case 
of any wilful substitution or one due to gross care¬ 
lessness, the seller shall bear the responsibility in full 
for the grower’s loss, and that the substitution of 10 
per cent, or more of the purchased quantity of any 
variety shall be taken as prima facie evidence of 
such wilful substitution; or whether »on the other 
hand it would be better to buy without written con¬ 
tract, or without any stipulation as to responsibility 
and trust to the common law for the enforcement of 
damages for loss against the seller. This is a most 
serious matter, because it is in no wise certain that 
the other State courts or Federal courts will take the 
same view as your New York court, and besides, the 
question of speculative damages enters here to limit 
the amount of damages which may be recovered in 
such a case. As everybody who has run up against 
the question knows to his sorrow, speculative damages 
consist of sums of money which the complainant 
might have made and probably would have made if 
he had not suffered the injury, but which he cannot 
prove that he would have made. For example, a 
court may hold that the grower could recover for 
what he paid for the trees and cost of tending them, 
but the value of what he would have had if he got 
what he paid for would be considered speculative, 
and yet this would be the most important element of 
the whole matter. Even with the greatest legal pre¬ 
cautions the purchaser is at a disadvantage, because 
in the time which must elapse between the purchase 
and the discovery even a large and responsible nur¬ 
sery business has a chance to make a barrel of money 
and go out of business, or sell out to a successor at 
a good profit. george w. coles. 
Wisconsin. 
R. N.-Y.—Our information leads us to believe that 
there is proportionately more fraud in the sale of 
so-called budded pecan trees than in any other branch 
of the nursery business. The trees bring high prices, 
and do not come into full bearing early. We have 
been told of cases where the seedling tree is cut back 
so that the sprout grows in such a way as to look 
just like a budded tree, when it is nothing but a 
seedling. At one dollar each there is great profit 
or “graft” in such work. We should want a written 
contract in buying such trees, yet even with this, there 
would be danger in dealing with some of the nut 
nurserymen. If a man was inclined to be a rogue 
anyway, he could make money faster by giving such 
a “guarantee,” asking a higher price and then get¬ 
ting out of business before his trees came into bearing. 
One reason for much of this trouble is the craze for 
cheap trees. Buyers beat down the nurserymen on 
prices, and this gives the fakers their best oppor¬ 
tunity. If a man expects to buy a guaranteed tree, 
he should also expect to pay more for it than he 
would for an ordinary tree. We believe there are 
nurserymen who would give a form of guarantee 
if buyers will pay for it. It will be either that or 
more home nurseries in connection with the orchard. 
